The tradition of wassailing (also spelled wasselling) falls into two distinct categories: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting wassail. The house-visiting wassail, which traditionally occurs on the twelfth day of Christmastide known as Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve (5 January), is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists, but has largely been displaced by carol singing. The orchard-visiting wassail is the custom of visiting orchards in cider-producing regions of England and singing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year. Notable traditional wassailing songs include "Here We Come a-Wassailing", "Gloucestershire Wassail", and "Gower Wassail". Wassail (, WOSS-əl, -ayl) is also a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing.
Etymology According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "wassail" originated as a borrowing from the Old Norse salutation ves heill, corresponding to Old English hál wes þú or wes hál – literally meaning 'be in good health' or 'be fortunate'. It was initially used in the sense of 'hail' or 'farewell', without any drinking connotation. The English interjection "hail" is a cognate of the etymon of the second part of "wassail", and was probably influenced by the Old English phrase. The expression later became part of the drinking formula "wassail ... drinkhail" which, the OED suggests, initially arose in England among the Anglo-Danes, and from there spread to the native population, being considered a specifically Anglo Saxon characteristic by the 12th century. The earliest record is of around 1140, in Geoffrey of Monmouth's telling of the Rowena story, which has wes heil ... drinc heil (or, in a variant reading, was heil). Later Middle English manuscripts have a variety of spellings, including wæs hæil, wæshail, wessail, washayl, washail, wesseyl, wassayl, wassaile, wassaylle, wessayle, whatsaile and whatsaill. The second expression, "drinkhail", may derive either from Old Norse or Old English, again with a variety of spellings including drinkel, drincheheil, drechehel, drincheheil, drinceseil, drinqueheil, drinkeil and dringail. The earliest example of the drinking phrases in a specifically English context comes from a manuscript of 1275, preserving a 12th-century text which has Old English: Þat freond sæiðe to freonde...Leofue freond wæs hail Þe oðer sæið Drinc hail. [That friend said to [the other] friend..., "beloved friend, wassail!"; the other said, "drinkhail!"] By c. 1300, the sense had extended from a toast to the drink itself, especially to the spiced ale used in Twelfth-night and Christmas Eve celebrations. By 1598 it was being applied to the custom of drinking healths on those nights. Shakespeare's 1603 use of "Keep wassel" in Hamlet i. iv. 10 was the first record of the term's use in a more general sense of "carousal" or "revelling".
Wassailing
In the cider-producing counties in the South West of England (primarily Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire) or South East England (Kent, Sussex, Essex, and Suffolk), as well as Jersey, wassailing refers to a traditional ceremony that involves singing and drinking to the health of trees on Twelfth Night in the hopes that they might better thrive. In the context of Christian Christmas celebrations, wassailing involves pronouncing a blessing on a tree so that it will bear fruit, often through the singing of a hymn. The purpose of wassailing is to awaken the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the Autumn. The ceremonies of each wassail vary from village to village but they generally all have the same core elements. In Dartmoor today, the Ashburton and Moorland Mission Community gathers in the barn at Newcombe Farm to sing Wassailing songs and pray for God's blessing on the New Year. A folktale from Somerset reflecting this custom tells of the Apple Tree Man, the spirit of the oldest apple tree in an orchard, and in whom the fertility of the orchard is thought to reside. In the tale a man offers his last mug of mulled cider to the trees in his orchard and is rewarded by the Apple Tree Man who reveals to him the location of buried gold.
Wassailing during Christmastide Traditionally, the wassail is celebrated on the twelfth day of Christmastide, known as Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve, being the day prior to the Epiphany. In the liturgical calendars of Western Christianity, including those of the Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholic denominations, Twelfth Night falls on 5 January. Some people still wassail on "Old Twelvey Night", 17 January, as it would have been before the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar in 1752. In the Middle Ages, the wassail was a reciprocal exchange between the feudal lords and their peasants as a form of recipient-initiated charitable giving, to be distinguished from begging. This point is made in the song "Here We Come A-wassailing", when the wassailers inform the lord of the house that
The lord of the manor would give food and drink to the peasants in exchange for their blessing and goodwill, i.e.
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